


Ancient Places

by MrProphet



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 15:19:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10699698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Ancient Places

"I just... don't think it's a good idea," Merlin ventured.

Arthur sighed. "Merlin, if we never did anything that you thought wasn't a good idea, where would we be?"

"Well... You wouldn't have been almost killed by fairies. Twice. You wouldn't have brought the unicorn's curse on Camelot or roused at least... _three_ armies of the undead..."

"And?"

"And...?" Merlin looked baffled.

"And we wouldn't have bacon, eggy cinnamon bread and honey for breakfast," Arthur finished, "and I for one think we would be the poorer for your over-caution in that instance." He lay back on his bedroll, the argument quite clearly resolved.

"Yes," Merlin agreed. "Of course; how silly of me. Clearly your mastery of cuisine outweighs your tendency to wake evil enchantments, especially when it comes to sleeping in the ruins of some dismal, ancient fortress. And if we overlook the ham macaroons," he added in a whisper.

"Merlin."

"Yes, Arthur?"

"Shut up and go to sleep."

*

The ruins did not look any better in the morning. The ruins were of an unwholesome, unnatural manufacture; great swathes of stone joined without seam or mortar; rusted, twisting metal ribs jutting out from the surface.

"I don't like it here," Merlin said again. "I didn't sleep well."

"You never sleep well out door," Arthur reminded him. "You are, and will always remain, too fond of your bed." He stood and stretched, but his good cheer seemed forced and he lacked his usual morning energy.

Merlin watched for a long moment before saying: "You felt it too, didn't you?"

Arthur opened his mouth to dismiss the sentiment, then his face grew serious. "Strike the camp, Merlin," he said. "We'll get an hour of travel in before breakfast."

Missing breakfast was almost unheard of and Merlin treated Arthur's direction with the seriousness it merited. When he had the bags packed and slung across the saddles, he led the horses over to Arthur, who was studying one of the seamless walls with a kind of rapt horror. Beneath the ivy and moss, there was a door in the wall; a great, dark opening from which cold, foetid air flowed.

"Give me a torch," Arthur ordered.

"Arthur..."

"Now." Arthur's voice was firm and Merlin knew he would not budge on this.

Merlin pulled a torch from the pack and bent to light it, risking a quick spark of magic instead of fiddling with a tinderbox. His skin crawled and he shuddered to his soul as something in the stones around him seemed to suck the power out of him. The flame died and he was forced to resort to the tinderbox after all.

"I do not like it here," he repeated as he handed the torch to Arthur.

The flickering light illuminated a room barely six feet square, but when Arthur let go of the torch it dropped away into darkness.

"I'll get the ropes," Merlin sighed.

Slowly, Arthur backed away from the opening. "No. We're leaving."

Merlin frowned. "But you never back away from anything," he said. "Idiotic heroics is like... your thing."

"My...?" Arthur shook his head. "We're going, and we're coming back with tools and stone to destroy this place, fill in the shaft and wipe this... obscenity from the face of the world."

Merlin gratefully mounted his horse and followed Arthur's lead, but he was troubled as well. "You talk the way your father does about magic," he noted.

"I've seen magic," Arthur replied. "It's never made me this... afraid."

Something metal clanked under the hooves of Merlin's horse, but they did not look around, only spurred their steeds forward, away from this place of ancient, brooding malice. Behind them, the metal gleamed where the hoof had knocked away the moss to reveal a simple sigil and two words, perhaps a pointer to this place's former use.

It said: Mornington Crescent.


End file.
